Before She Was Mama
by justanoutlaw
Summary: Snow wasn't always a princess, a mother, a wife or a teacher. She was once a bandit who got drunk and threw arrows. Emma doesn't know that side of her mother. At Aesop's Tables, she got a sneak peek.


**mystical-flute prompted: "I never told you how wild I used to be when I was younger." - Snow & Emma**

**Setting this as an AU to S6. Hook had just left after he and Emma's argument, so she moved back in with her parents. The morning after the drunk night out with Regina in 6x15, Emma gets to know more about her mother's past.**

Snow groaned as she limped into the kitchen. The lighting hit her too hard. Her head throbbed. It felt as though she had swallowed a dozen cotton balls before she went to bed last night. Pulling her robe closer to herself, she found some dry toast, a cup of warm tea and two aspirin waiting for her. Beside the breakfast was the legal pad that she and David had been using to communicate since the sleeping curse began.

_**Heard you girls had a lot of fun last night. Enjoy. I love you.**_

She softly smiled, taking the medicine with her tea. It felt soothing to her throat. She wasn't ready to try the toast just yet, not trusting her stomach would be able to handle it.

"You're up already, huh?" Snow turned to find Emma standing there. She was changed for work; her curls still damp from the shower. "Dad was only awake for a few hours then."

"I feel bad, but he knows I have to teach today."

Emma started looking for her jacket. "Look at it this way, he's getting a lot of much needed rest."

Snow leaned against the counter, the tea cup clasped between her hands. "How are you doing? We didn't get a chance to talk about much last night."

"I'm fine, Mom. Really. I guess I should be asking you the same thing. It took both me and Regina to get you back in here."

Snow chuckled softly. "Yeah, my alcohol tolerance has gone down a tad since I had your brother." The curse had prevented her from feeling the effects of anything after Emma's birth, but she hadn't been so lucky with Neal. She was getting older and that meant she couldn't drink with the dwarfs like she used to. "Can't exactly make a bet with Doc over who can drink more ale."

Emma tilted her head. "Seriously?"

"Well, if my hazy memories serve me right, I'm lucky I didn't take out any of those Vikings last night." She could see the helmet she stole from one of them hanging off the bed post.

"No, I mean, drinking games. You did all that?"

Snow's smile grew. There were times she forgot how little Emma knew about her past. She had only gotten to know Mary Margaret in the beginning. Her cursed persona hadn't been a big drinker, maybe a glass of wine after work but that was it. Snow had sort of opened up about her bandit past in Neverland, but there was still so much of Snow that was a mystery to Emma.

"I never told you how wild I used to be when I was younger, I guess," Snow said. She shrugged and took another sip of her tea. "I was pretty much the eighth dwarf for awhile there. You drag Grumpy to the drunk tank a lot, you're aware how much they can put away."

Emma's eyes were a little wide. "Well yes, but I just never connected that with you. You're…you're…"

"A mom?" Emma sheepishly nodded and Snow laughed, ignoring that it made her head hurt more. "Of course I am. Before that, I was a lot more, though. I was a bandit that fought off Regina's dark knights. I used an arrow to do so, along with hunting for food. I played drinking games and threw darts. Walt Disney got it wrong. I wasn't cleaning their cottage and talking to birds 24/7."

Emma looked a bit scandalized by all of this news. That just made Snow smile more. It was nice to get to share bits of her past with her daughter.

"Do you ever miss it?" Emma asked. "Your bandit days?"

Snow shook her head. "No. It wasn't all the fun I probably make it seem to be. I was in danger constantly. I didn't know where my next meal was coming from most of the time. Until I met Ruby, then your father, I didn't really have anyone but myself." She looked from her daughter, then over to where both Neal and David were sleeping. "No, I like my life as a wife, mother and teacher a lot more."

Emma nodded. The two didn't say it out loud, but they knew they had a lot in common. Snow had heard about Emma's time on the streets, living in her car and stealing to eat. It was a modernized version of what she had gone through. It always broke her heart to think about her daughter going through that and she wished she didn't have to.

At the same time, she hoped that now her daughter had more of an insight of her as well. She wasn't just a spoiled princess who lived in a castle all her life. She had a past too, filled with scars. Before she was a mom, her life was a lot different.


End file.
